Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart

Tomato and goat cheese tart.

I had some goat cheese I wanted to use and I found this recipe for a tart.  I took the ingredients (except for pastry) with me to Peggy Jean's and she and I made this.  She had a prepared pastry.

Ingredients.

One prepared pastry
4 or 5 tomatoes
3 teaspoons dried rosemary
4 eggs
4 to 5 ounces goat cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil



Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Oil a 10 inch tart pan and add a  prepared pastry.

Line tart pan with pastry.

Slice tomatoes and arrange in concentric circles in bottom of tart pan.

Add tomatoes.

Beat the eggs and pour over tomatoes.

Pour eggs over tomatoes.

Crumble the goat cheese into small pieces and spread over the tomatoes and eggs.

Sprinkles goat cheese on top.

Sprinkle with rosemary and olive oil.


Add rosemary on top.

Bake in 350F oven for 30 or 40 minutes until brown on top.

Out of oven.

Let sit for about ten minutes before serving.

Let sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

This is also good at room temperature or cold.

Ready to eat.



Enjoy!


The original recipe called for spreading Dijon mustard on bottom of pie crust before adding other ingredients, but I forgot to do this.  I have made it with the mustard and it is better when the mustard is used. 

Grace and I make Chocolate Chip Cookies

Grace made chocolate chip cookies for her Dad.

Granddaughter Grace, who turns 15 this summer, is interested in learning to cook.  She was over today, and I thought chocolate chip cookies would be a simple recipe for her to make.  And she could give the cookies to her Dad for Father's Day, because he really likes chocolate chip cookies. 


I googled and found a recipe I thought would be good, and this is the one we used:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe: Crispy, Crunchy Delights 

 

Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

25 mins

 

Bakery style chocolate chip cookies, buttery with a chocolate crunch!

Author: Karlynn Johnston

Recipe type: cookies,dessert

Serves: 10

Ingredients

• 2½ cups of flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup of butter, softened
• 1¼ cups of white granulated sugar
• ¼ cup packed brown sugar
• 1½ tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 2 cups of chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Kick the tires and light the fires to 375 degrees.
2. Cream together your butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy. Add in the egg and vanilla, mixing thoroughly. Beat in the flour, baking soda and salt.
3. When that is done, fold in the two cups of chocolate chips by hand, and prepare to put them on some parchment paper lined cookie sheets.
4. Roll a heaping tablespoon of cookie dough into a ball, 12 per cookie sheet.
5. Take a glass and using the bottom, flatten out each cookie. If the cookie sticks, start wetting the bottom of the glass with water, they will come right off.
6. Flatten each of them as much as you can. This is a dry dough – no sticky chewiness going on here- but it’s just wet enough to make perfect little flat cookie patties.
7. Bake at 375 for 9-11 minutes, until golden brown. Cool on the sheets completely.
8. These turned out to be wonderfully crispy, crunchy and were surprisingly a hit with everyone. The butter flavor really is apparent in these ones due to the lack of flavor that comes with brown sugar, but that isn’t a bad thing at all. Buttery, crispy little bites of chocolate heaven!

Recipe by The Kitchen Magpie at http://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe-crispy-crunchy-delights


Grace learned how to measure ingredients accurately.

Grace measuring sugar.

I taught her how to level a cup of flour or sugar or any dry ingredient by smoothing off the top with the edge of a knife. 

Leveling a cup of flour with the edge of a knife.



She learned how to use the Kitchen Aid mixer.

Learning to use the Kitchen Aid Mixer.

Out of the oven.

Cookies for her Dad.

The cookies turned out great, and she has a nice Father's Day gift for her Dad, with extra for the family. 

Quick Lunch: Pan Seared Salmon

Pan seared salmon with capers.

I had a lot of good seafood when I was in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia recently, but now that I am back home, I still have a hankering for seafood.  I found this very easy recipe from allrecipes.com and had a delicious and quick lunch today.


4 (6 oz) fillets salmon (I used only two.)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of capers
1/8 teaspoon salt (I omitted the salt, the capers are salty enough for me)
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
2 slices of lemon


1.  Preheat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat for 3 minutes. (I used my cast iron pan.)

Preheat cast iron skillet.

2.  Coat salmon with olive oil.  Place in skillet and increase heat to high.  Cook for minutes.


Salmon fillets coated with olive oil.

Pepper, capers and lemon.

3.  Sprinkle salmon with capers, salt, and pepper. 


Sprinkle with capers.

4.  Turn salmon over and cook for 5 minutes, or until browned.  Salmon was done in about 3 minutes.

Cook other side until browned.

5.  Transfer salmon fillet to plate and garnish with lemon slices. 


Ready to eat. 

Enjoy!

Zucchini Bread From My Homegrown Zucchini*

Olive Oil Zucchini Bread.

I planted a couple of zucchini plants in my raised bed this year, and so far I have harvested two zucchinis.  The plants are quite lovely, and they produce beautiful yellow flowers of two kinds: male and female.  It is the female flower that produces the fruit (yes the zucchini is actually a fruit even though we think of it as a vegetable).  Botanically speaking a fruit develops from the ovary of a flower.

Zucchini developing from the ovary at the base of female flower petals.

As I said it is the female flower that develops into the zucchini squash.

Lower flower is female developing into zucchini.  Male flower above produces the pollen.

One of my zucchinis still on the vine.

I am quite fond of zucchini bread so I used part of my zucchini harvest to make a loaf of  bread using a recipe that was in the NY Times.  It uses olive oil instead of butter.

I mixed the wet ingredients together.

Wet ingredients.

Wet ingredients mixed together.

Then I mixed the dry ingredients together, and folded the dry into the wet.

Mixed dry ingredients.

Ready to bake at 350F for 40 to 55 minutes.

After 50 minutes of baking here is the loaf of bread.

Olive Oil Zucchini Bread.

It is quite delicious.  Maybe not quite as good as the recipe that calls for butter instead of olive oil, but I like to think of this as a pretty healthy variant.

*This was first published in my gaddingaboutwithgrandpat blog.